


Shamelessly Cotton Candy Baby Panda Daydreams

by Dark Witch the Injection Fairy Lily (The_INTJ_Sagittarius_Scorpio_Gryffindork)



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!, Yu-Gi-Oh! Series
Genre: F/M, Female Mutou Yuugi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-26 03:22:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10778496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_INTJ_Sagittarius_Scorpio_Gryffindork/pseuds/Dark%20Witch%20the%20Injection%20Fairy%20Lily
Summary: A fem Yugi is much more confident in her own skin than a male Yugi is, a girl reacts differently to bullying than a boy, and the dynamics of a few of Yugi's relationships are significantly altered by the gender switch.  The Millennium Puzzle also has... trouble syncing a male identified soul inside a female identified body, so it decides to go with something a bit different.  What do we have at the end?  A seriously changed story.  What would it take for one Japanese girl to insert herself into the narrative between the Pharaoh and his High Priest?Manga verse with anime fillers and movies as well as Yu-Gi-Oh R.  Two alternate endings: one ending arc for each pairing.  Characters will be tagged as they appear.





	Shamelessly Cotton Candy Baby Panda Daydreams

Chapter One: Polka Dotted Granny Underwear

“Hey, Yugi! Want to play some basketball instead of sitting in here by yourself?”

I gave one more snack to the kitten on my Neko Atsume app, then looked up to the challenge from my smartphone and its pink gel phone case decorated with anime snow fairy stickers and cute little witchy broom stickers. “I am literally less than five feet tall,” I said evenly. “Feel like lifting me up anytime I need to make a basket?”

“Uh… no?” said the dark-haired boy by the classroom door holding the basketball, confused. He was gathering a group of boys and girls together to go play a game of co-ed basketball out on the court. Lunch was finished at Domino High and the bell had just rung for recess. I kept my butt firmly planted in my classroom seat.

“Then no,” I said, returning without much interest in the boy back to my phone. It had gone dark, so I pressed the button, flipping past the lock screen of my pet pug Choko and turning from Neko Atsume to Pokemon Go. 

I carefully clicked out of my ASMR channel, Cotton Candy Baby Panda Daydreams ASMR, the first five words being my typical online username. The last thing I wanted was for my classmates to catch onto my ASMR page. That would be a lesson in humiliation. I got enough weird sexual comments on there as it was. Some rude ones, too. Apparently my username was “weird.” I preferred “different” or “eccentric.”

The boy walked up and put his elbows on my desk. I leaned back, eyebrows rising. “Come on, Muto,” he said quietly. “Don’t you ever get tired of sitting in this gloomy, dark classroom by yourself every recess?”

“I come prepared, armed with eBooks, mp3, and my Gameboy,” I said. I waved to my backpack handbag, cloth and pastel colored and decorated with tiny, dancing soot sprites clutching rainbow sprinkles. I took out a thermos of hand concocted herbal tea, also decorated with stickers - basically everything I owned was covered in stickers - and took a sip. “I usually just rock out to some electronic, dance, or pop music and read a book or work on a game. I’m fine.”

“I still think it’d be fun if you came out and gave basketball a try.”

“And I think I suck at gym, and I love glitter and my smiley face emoji addiction instead, and you should stop trying to push me into something I’m not interested in,” I said firmly. I was highly skeptical and somewhat suspicious. The insistence on getting me to play a game of basketball was a little strange. I was a total girl, ultra feminine and inherently gentle, and I refused to be shamed for that or pushed into something that wasn’t my style.

“You’re a weird one, Muto,” the boy admitted. “You come with your own drink. You even come with your own meal.”

“I want to make sure all the beauty products I consume and everything I eat is organic and cruelty and cage free. The easiest way to do that is to just bring all my own food,” I said, nonplussed, puzzled and still suspicious. Beauty products? Yeah. I was into the whole pastel cutesy fashion thing. The great tragedy of my life was how ugly Domino High uniforms were. “The teas are herbal concoctions I make myself. You should see the herbs rack in my kitchen.”

“Yeah, I can totally get behind that!” said the boy, too enthusiastically. “So, what are you, like… the good girl? Always getting all those good grades, always volunteering?”

“I want to become a doctor,” I said flatly, becoming less impressed every second. “My grades have to be spotless. I volunteer my time at animal shelters, children’s centers, and goodwill donation centers, yeah. But it’s not really a volunteering addiction or a golden heart kind of thing. It’s just because I want to. I care about that stuff. There are hundreds of charities I could have supported, but I picked the ones I care most about: animals, children, and hunger and poverty.” I leaned away from him defensively.

“But haven’t you ever wanted to have fun?” the boy pushed.

“Are we _still_ on about basketball?” I asked, exasperated. I irritably blew a strand of golden blonde bangs out of my face. “Look, I’m not playing. I think games and puzzles and books are fun. And I hardly think playing a game of basketball would qualify me for bad girl of the year award.”

“Well… yeah… but…” Now the boy was blushing, unsure of what to say. I was pretty sure he was coming onto me, but I was pointedly pretending to ignore his fumbling attempts. “Look, it’d be a start! You could try something new!” he finally said brightly. I glared at him flatly.

“Come on, don’t bother Yugi,” said Mazaki Anzu, my closest friend since elementary school, who was significantly taller and more graceful and athletic than I was. She had short, sensible chocolate brown hair, too, perfect for sports. Anzu glared. “She prefers being in here and that’s her own damn business. I’ll play with you, just stop annoying her.”

Anzu always spent recess outside. We’d become friends because in first grade I’d offered her a play on my Gameboy. She’d tried a game, but gotten frustrated when she couldn’t win, throwing it on the ground and smashing it. I laughed and said I’d bring an easier game tomorrow, but it had never stuck. Anzu was not a gamer the way I was, and she probably never would be. Anzu was a dancer - she took secret ballet classes instead, dreaming of the famous ballet company in New York City. She had to be free and have physical action, or she’d go insane, and I understood that in the same way she understood my preference for sitting and doing cerebral activities in the quiet. She was my fiercest protector and advocate, and had been ever since I’d easily forgiven her for losing her temper and breaking my Gameboy when I didn’t have much money in the first place. I just told her I understood - the only time I ever lost my temper and got competitive was when it came to gaming, too.

“It would have been hypocritical of me to get angry with you,” I admitted. “I’ve smashed a couple of games myself.”

But we had that in common - neither of us had much money, and both of us had expensive dreams. Anzu struggled to pay for dance lessons. The idea of me and my family having the money for college and med school was laughable.

“Fine, fine,” the boy sighed, intimidated by Anzu in a way he’d never have been intimidated by me, lifting his hands in irritation and turning to leave with everyone else. “I couldn’t get Muto to come,” I heard him mutter to a boy as they left. “I got Mazaki to agree, though.”

“Muto, not joining in when something fun is happening with a bunch of guys? Huge surprise,” I heard his friend mutter back sarcastically. “Stuck up priss.”

The classroom door closed and I was alone, sitting at one desk across the rows of rolltops in the dim and the quiet, sunlight filtering through motes of dust past windows on the left side. I sighed, looking after the closed door as the chatter faded away. “You’re right,” I admitted to the boy who was no longer there. “I _would_ have liked to play with you guys. You just never play anything I can get in on.

“But it’s okay.” It wasn’t, really, but I took a deep breath and tried to pretend and sound cheerful. I lifted the top of my desk, shuffling around through ladybug notepads, Hello Kitty sticky notes, and glitter pens. Some unfinished arts and crafts decorated liberally with glitter and sequins were in there, too. I was basically a little kid. I loved kid’s movies, I always ate the kid’s meals at fast food places and restaurants, and I was kind of addicted to fruit juice. “I can find something else to do.”

I took out a pocky snack - I was a comfort eater - and put in my headphones, clicking to electronic dance pop. As I chewed and sipped at my tea thermos, I shuffled through the endless black hole that was my seemingly tiny backpack handbag, looking for something to do. Electronics and games, cruelty free pink lip gloss, cruelty free warm vanilla sugar hand lotion, extra glittery bows and hair barrettes to tie back my red and black streaked hair just in case of an emergency like the current one breaking or tearing - “Oh, I know!” I brightened. “Today is the day I complete _it_ \- the treasure I always carry!” I chirped cheerfully. I swung my legs above the floor eagerly, big violet eyes lighting up, my entire heart shaped face covered with an excited beam.

I took out a closed-lid gold box covered in Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, setting it on the desk before me. A massive Eye of Horus was carved into one side. I smiled warmly down at it. What was in here had gotten me through some really difficult times in my life. Every time something bad happened, I worked on it, putting my heart and soul into it.

I always thought I had gotten so far because I asked nothing from it. With its magical reputation, anyone would have expected the person trying to solve it to ask for something - some wish granted. I asked for nothing. I could get by. 

“Inside this box is my greatest and most secret treasure,” I whispered for an invisible audience. “It has a riddle! The treasure can be seen… yet you can’t see it. What could that mean? The answer is -”

I moved to lift the box off with a great flourish for the invisible person before me - and right at that moment, a hand snatched the box off my desk from behind, ripping my headphones out of my ears. I gasped and whirled around, heart stopping. Alarmed? Yeah. That was an Ancient Egyptian artefact. 

But mostly embarrassed. I hated being caught talking to myself. It was a force of habit.

“Muto Yugi, sitting alone in a gloomy, empty, creepy classroom, muttering to an invisible friend that a yellow box is her treasure,” the tall boy with spiked brown hair narrated, grinning.

“Honda Hiroto, being a total dick and picking on a single, isolated teenage girl,” I narrated in return, glaring.

“Hey! I’m not picking on you! I just wanted to take a look at this fascinating box.” Honda smirked, lifting it up to the light. 

“It can be seen yet you can’t see it?” Jonouchi Katsuya, slightly smaller with messy blond hair, frowned at the box in befuddlement. He probably wouldn’t know a riddle if it bit him in the ass. “What the hell does that mean?”

“Who cares?” Honda sneered, and the two of them chuckled. They still had the box. This wasn’t good. That wasn’t like stealing a purse or an iPad. It was the only one left in the world, and it couldn’t be replaced.

I stood, my face warm. “Honda, give it back,” I said with resolve.

“What’ll you do for me if I do?” The sexual innuendo was obvious. Honda Hiroto was known to bully weaker guys in the class into buying porn for him.

 _Tell on you,_ was the pansy way, the quickest way to getting the box smashed all over the floor. “I’m not doing anything for you,” I growled instead. “Just give it back. It’s important to me.” Telling them it was valuable probably wasn’t the route to go either. The two of them could just steal it.

“No!” Honda laughed, and tossed it high out of my arm’s reach, straight over my head to Jonouchi. I jumped and made a grab for it, yelling, but I couldn’t make it - Jonouchi caught the box instead.

“Yugi, watching this pains me,” Jonouchi sighed.

“So stop it from happening,” I snapped.

“No, you don’t get it. In the grand scheme of things? We’re nothing. We’re not even real bullies. You’re a walking bully target, Yugi,” said Jonouchi flatly. “And one of these days, if you don’t want the snot beaten out of you, you’re going to have to toughen up. That’s where I come in. So here’s my deal.”

He stood straight.

“You hit me. One good punch. I won’t fight back. You do that, and I’ll give you your precious box back. Deal?”

“I’m not hitting you to get the box back, Jonouchi,” I growled. “Your weird brand of chauvinistic chivalry isn’t going to do a damn thing.”

“Chauvi -?” He and Honda both looked bewildered.

“So I was right about your intelligence.” I smirked. “That _is_ why you couldn’t think your way through the riddle. You probably couldn’t think your way out of a paper sack.”

Jonouchi’s eyes narrowed. “Fine then,” he said quietly. “Don’t get the box back.”

I stood there, trying to figure out how to win this without resorting to kicking him in the crotch.

“What’s the matter with you? Go,” said Jonouchi smoothly. “No way you’re getting this back.”

“It’s ours now,” Honda leered into my face, his breath hot. I leaned my head back, wrinkling my nose.

“What’s in here, anyway? Only one way to find out.” Jonouchi shrugged and opened the lid for a peek. 

“Don’t you dare lose anything in that box, Jonouchi,” I demanded, hands bunching into fists.

Jonouchi saw the contents and scoffed. “Wha -? That’s lame. Here, Honda.” He tossed the box toward Honda - and Anzu reached out her hand and caught it instead. She had just entered the room behind Jonouchi.

“If it’s so dumb,” she said heatedly, “then there’s no harm in giving it back to Yugi, is there?”

I relaxed in relief, my knees going weak. “Anzu…” The box was safe again.

Anzu got right up in Jonouchi’s face. “What are you going to do to get it back, Jonouchi? Huh? You gonna hit a girl?” she asked mockingly.

Jonouchi growled, but he and Honda reluctantly stormed from the room. “Damn nosy woman. We won’t forget this!”

“You guys are the dumb ones, bullying people weaker than you! Now scram!” she shouted after them, and the classroom door slammed.

Anzu set the box back on my desk. “Here it is. Your precious treasure.”

“Thank you, Anzu,” I said, collapsing back into my desk chair in a great rush of breath. “That was incredible. I just - I despise violence. I hate fighting.”

“I know,” said Anzu. “You know why, right, Yugi? You know why they pick on you?”

“Because I’m pathetic?” I wondered flatly.

Anzu smiled and sat down across from me. “Because you’re tiny. You bring out a guy’s protective instincts. You have fragile little wrists and an elegant little neck. And you have that whole innocent ingenue thing going on.”

“I do?” I said, lost.

Anzu laughed. “See?” she said. “There it is. Jonouchi and Honda try to get you to ‘man up’ for the same reason they won’t go for it when I try to pick a fight with them. In the end, they never like seeing a girl hit.”

“Is that also why Honda makes sexual innuendos at me all the time, or Jonouchi blushes whenever I catch him staring at my butt?” I said with sarcastic, mischievous humor.

“Ugh. The guys in this class, though,” said Anzu, disgusted. “You know why I’m back in here? The guys out there on the court told the girls that they could only make a shot by doing a jump shot and using a certain shooting posture. It turned out? They just wanted a good look up our skirts.”

 _“That’s_ why they were all so insistent on me coming out there -” I began in realization.

“And why they were so disappointed when you didn’t want to go,” Anzu finished, smirking. “Yeah. They wanted a good look at your ass. You should have seen the boner this one guy got when I made my first shot. It was like there was a snake bulging out of the side of his leg underneath his uniform pants. I swear to God, the guys in this class would hump a stump.”

“They probably have. I hope they’re into my polka dotted granny underwear,” I said, and me and Anzu both started giggling madly. “Honestly, though, how many of the things Honda says to me per day, on average, do you think he got from either softcore or hardcore porn? Go!”

“Oh, I’d say at least half,” said Anzu.

“I was going with three-quarters. You’re more optimistic than I am,” I admitted. “Congratulations. The worst part is? I’m not even his crush. Everyone knows that’s Nosaka Miho.”

“Yeah, and the only person who doesn’t know -” Anzu continued.

“Is Nosaka Miho,” we said together.

“I wouldn’t worry too much about it. It’s his loss, not yours. Yugi, I have to ask,” said Anzu. “What’s in this thing, anyway?” She pointed down at the golden box.

“Well, it’s kind of a secret. You have to promise not to tell anyone,” I said, wincing.

“Okay.” Anzu leaned forward, curious.

I finally made my great reveal. I lifted the lid off the box with a great flourish to show off the contents. Inside the box were disconnected pieces of a gold three dimensional puzzle, another Eye of Horus carved into one piece.

“Wow, that’s beautiful,” Anzu gasped, taking out some pieces to look at them. “But it’s all disconnected. What _is_ it?”

“It’s a puzzle,” I said, smiling. “I’ve never finished it, so I don’t know what it looks like. In other words, it’s something that can be seen yet can’t be seen. You can see all the pieces, but you can’t see the finished result.

“You’ve been to my place, Anzu. My grandfather runs a tiny shop full of unusual, rare, and exotic games and puzzles. Kame Games, after the ancient Japanese turtle of wisdom. Me, my Mom, and my Grandpa live in the flat above the shop. We don’t have much and you’d think there’s nothing special there, right? Well, one day when I was seven, I found this way back on a shelf of the shop gathering dust. I took it down and began trying to solve it, and I guess I just… never stopped. I became engrossed with this thing that I could never complete.

“It’s gotten me through some really hard times. When my grandmother died, this puzzle was there for me. I never asked anything of it except to complete it, and it took all my heart and made me feel better. And… when my father… you know…”

“Yeah,” said Anzu sympathetically. “I know. You’ve been putting your whole soul into it since you were seven. That’s why it’s so special to you.”

“Yeah. But there’s this cool story behind it!” I brightened. “My grandfather’s been lots of things. A professional gambler, an archaeologist… tons of things before he started the shop! Well he was on a dig in Egypt, and they uncovered this box from an unknown teenage Pharaoh’s tomb. This was back in the era when archaeologists were still allowed to keep some of what they found. My grandfather was a gamer, so of course he had to have the Pharaoh’s puzzle. It’s called the Millennium Puzzle.

“He sent it to some of the greatest minds in the world, with only the stipulation that they couldn’t use a computer to figure out how to put it together. _Nobody_ could. It was always sent back unfinished. They always reported the same thing - that there was some kind of block preventing them from finishing. Like they hadn’t been _chosen,_ in this weird way. And of course, in typical Ancient Egyptian manner, the hieroglyphs on the puzzle box speak of magic, so people began to get spooked.

“My grandfather eventually put it way back on a shelf in his game shop, and when I found it, he let me try to solve it. I don’t think he thought I’d get very far - you know, that I’d give up after the first week. But look at me, eight years later.” I shrugged and put my hands in the air, smiling sheepishly. “Still a sucker.”

“No, I think that’s really admirable, Yugi!” said Anzu immediately. “Keep trying! Think about it - maybe _no one’s_ ever gotten this far. So… you really haven’t wished anything on the Puzzle? And you’re really not afraid of its magic?”

“I haven’t wished for anything. All the things I want - money for college, for example - I can get under my own power. Love from family, I have. I have a best friend in you. I have a cool place to live, and a school to go to, food and water. I’m really lucky. I don’t feel like I have anything to complain about.

“And… no. Maybe it just likes me. But the Millennium Puzzle has never frightened me.”


End file.
